dawn.vogel | September 29, 2023
It’s spooky season! I mean, in my world, spooky season is year round, but it’s time for the October 2023 writing prompts, and this month, it’s all about Halloween! Column 1, as it always is for the October prompts, is Mab’s Drawlloween Challenge. This one is always my favorite list, year after year! The hashtag […]
dawn.vogel | September 28, 2023
“Just Smile” is one of a handful of yokai stories I’ve written, generally during Drawlloween (an October art challenge that I use for writing prompts). I really love the different types of monsters that different cultures develop, because it gives a bit of insight into that culture’s fears that people might not otherwise talk about. […]
dawn.vogel | September 27, 2023
Tea Leaves by Jacob Budenz (Amble Press, 2023) is a collection of short stories with mostly queer protagonists and filled with a delightful surrealness across the various worlds and characters of the stories. I first became familiar with Jacob’s writing when he submitted the story “Seen” for DefCon One’s I Didn’t Break the Lamp anthology, which […]
dawn.vogel | September 26, 2023
Of the stories in Droplets from the Universe, “Aethervirales” appears on first glance to be the least suited to collection of joyful and humorous sci-fi. After all, it begins with a murdered person. But I included it in this collection because the protagonist of the story solves the case and has a happy ending. As the […]
dawn.vogel | September 25, 2023
As I mentioned previously, I’m working through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled very slowly to absorb as much wisdom as I can about writing poetry. This week’s post (the final one!) covers Chapter 4 on Diction and Poetics Today. Most of this chapter is Stephen Fry talking about how poetry has moved him and some of […]
dawn.vogel | September 22, 2023
In connection with Monday’s post about seasons in worldbuilding, I’m thinking about seasons as characters. How would you write a character based on spring? Which elements of that season would you emphasize? You could write a character who’s all joy and rebirth and growing things, or you could write a character who’s like torrential downpours […]
dawn.vogel | September 21, 2023
Have you had a chance to check out Dead-Starred Futures yet? It’s filled with very short stories and poems, all along the theme of dystopian sci-fi. The stories are generally dark, though there’s occasional humor interspersed with the darkness. Dead-Starred Futures is available in ebook only, wherever you like to buy ebooks!
dawn.vogel | September 20, 2023
Today, I’m talking with Zilla Novikov, author of fiction and a fantastic cookbook! Read on to learn more! DV: Tell me a little about yourself and your writing. ZN: I’m Zilla Novikov (she/her), a depressed millennial who is very tired of late-stage capitalism. Turns out, that’s an endless font of story ideas. People tell me […]
dawn.vogel | September 19, 2023
I’ve got several books for kids, including steampunk and fantasy! The Trouble with the Tick-Tock Tabby is a middle grade book featuring girl detectives Chrysanthemum and Marigold Marsh. The setting is a steampunk Victorian era. The characters are 9 and 12 years old, which skews toward the younger end of middle grade, but the reading level […]
dawn.vogel | September 18, 2023
One of the WriteHive online conference panels I watched was Seasons in Worldbuilding, which was an interesting look at how you can use seasons as part of your writing. Even outside of the part they play in worldbuilding, seasons can be used evoke emotions related to that season. In some writing, the season and/or the […]
